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A Very Franken Christmas

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Minnesota
for the Al Franken campaign.Under
the Franken tree (it’s a secular family celebration— I know, I know, Hanukah is
still in the air, but hey, don’t mess with my semi-musical lede), there’s a
very big present and it looks a lot like a Senate seat.While the big box under the evergreen
ornaments probably won’t be unwrapped until after some extra special judicial
wrangling into January or February, the shape of the seat itself is
increasingly clear under all the wrapping.

The Minnesota Supremes have now ruled in Franken's favor over a Coleman challenge. Oh, there will be more challenges, I know— over
unallocated votes from some 1,600 absentee ballots which were left uncounted
due to clerical errors (everyone agrees these can only help Franken), and also a challenge over some 130-150 votes the Colemanites believe to have been
double-counted, due to machine malfunctions.There will likely be at least one more major court
challenge—after all this is done.It may even be up to the US Senate to finally decide the credentials of
its last remaining unseated member from the November 2008 polls.

But Franken is ahead at the end of the canvassing board
count, by 47 or 48 votes, depending on your source.It’s now more likely than it has been throughout the
incredibly close ballot counting and recounting that, in the battle to unseat
Norm Coleman, Al Franken will emerge victorious— and take back a Senate seat
that was once occupied by the upper chamber’s most progressive member, Paul
Wellstone.

What makes this extra-holiday-special for the Minnesota
Farmer Labor type Democrats is that Franken can finally feel the likely
possibility of success after a grinding six-year mission to take back the
seat.Former comedian and then
political talk host Franken began to think about celebrating this moment back
in 2002, after focusing his outrage on the lies perpetrated in the scurrilous
Rove-inspired, wingnut talk-show spread, fact-lite, accusation-heavy hatchet
job done on his lifelong friends in the late Senator Wellstone’s family and
among the Senator’s close associates.

It was the ruthlessness in way that Rove & Co. abused
the untimely death of Wellstone in a plane crash before the 2002 election that
seemed to have motivated Franken to leave behind a successful comedy career for
a more political life.

For those who don’t remember the specifics, Paul
Wellstone, always a real fighter for the poor, the underrepresented, those in
need, for rank and file labor, and the victims of aggression or ignorance, died
very shortly before the 2002 elections when his campaign plane, blinded by bad
weather, went down in the cold Minnesota autumn.His wife Sheila, his daughter Marcia, and several other
campaign workers, as well as the two pilots, died with him in the crash.Soon thereafter, because of an enormous
outpouring of tribute and grief from grassroots supporters, his memorial
service was moved to the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena and featured
a long stream of friends, allies, and recipients of Wellstone’s seemingly
endless generosity, many of whom spoke in memory of the
professor-turned-politician.

The entire three-hour celebration of Wellstone’s life had
the air of a progressive revival meeting, with a mix of political and personal
reminiscences (personally, I watched it all on C-Span). At one point, during the ceremony, the
presence of Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott on the jumbotron
engendered a smattering of boos in the audience.Lott and Governor Jesse Ventura walked out of the memorial
in protest—and soon thereafter was born a campaign out of Rush Limbaugh’s radio
show and the usual wingnut corners to fight against Democrats “using
Wellstone’s death” to political advantage.

The spectacle of right-wingers, most of whom hadn’t
attended Wellstone’s service, and who had never given Wellstone personal
respect during his lifetime, capitalizing on the bad manners of a few of the
grieving members of a 20,000-strong crowd in order to gin up anger against
Democrats and progressives in the 2002 Senatorial campaign pissed off Al Franken.Franken, who had been at the memorial
himself and who had not been able to discern any inappropriate ruckus at the
time, was moved to fight back against the right wing noise machine.

Franken began his serious activism as a writer, radio
host, and eventually as a Minnesota Senatorial candidate in the years
since.His first book, Lies and
the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, told the Wellstone memorial story from his point
of view and also began his personal campaign to unmask his opponent, Norm
Coleman, as a political opportunist. Franken sacrificed economic opportunity in
the entertainment business to take on the unglamorous struggle to bring reality
and balance to the spin of American politics.Franken became the most popular of many citizen journalists
during the Bush era who waded into the maelstrom of post-9/11 reactionary fervor and
spoke truth to the powers that be.

Franken’s work since 2002 embodies the spirit of citizen
activism: to fight for the underrepresented in an period when the power of big
media and big corporate power ran relatively untrammeled.His work as the only big ticket on the
upstart Air America radio and as a progressive voice who challenged, by name
(Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh), many of the right-wing talk giants and their
concocted campaigns against individuals and groups because of religion or a
willingness to speak out was invaluable as an example.Franken gave a platform to many writers
from the blogosphere on his show before it became de rigeur to quote bloggers.

In
short, Franken became a real mensch in the progressive world.That he might now become a real thorn
in the side of the powerful in the Senate is welcome news indeed.Merry Chistmas!